For Saigoneers, Vietnam’s recent bouts of heavy rain were nothing but a minor convenience. However, for rice farmers in other parts of the country, unpredictable weather patterns have the potential to cause severe damage to their spring-summer planting season.
According to Thanh Nien, the majority of Vietnam’s farmers planted for the new season right after Tet ended. However, because of the lingering effects of last year’s rainy season, 2017’s dry season hasn’t provided a suitable timeframe for new fields to sprout.
Nguyen Thi Hien, a 50-year-old farmer in Binh Dinh province, shared with the news source that 1,500 square meters of her family’s farm have been waterlogged for days. Because of stormy weather in 2016, Hien has attempted to plant new rice three times since the end of last year without success. The most recent attempt was also spoiled by two instances of heavy rain during Tet.
The situation is the same in Thua Thien-Hue province, where around 2,000 hectares of paddy fields have been badly damaged by off-season rains before and after Tet, according to Ho Vang, vice director of the province’s Office of Agriculture.
Most farming communities are trying to minimize damage by digging ditches to drain the excess water, like Nguyen Van Cung’s family in Can Tho, whose farm has nearly 1,000 hectares currently submerged under water. “We can’t harvest now because the crops are not ready," Cung told VnExpress.
As farmers scramble to find solutions to deal with the aftermath of off-season rain, many are worried that a delay in planting new fields will lead to further disruptions in the schedule, which could lead to difficulties in controlling pests and yields.
VnExpress also cited statistics showing that 7,000 hectares of rice fields have been badly damaged by rain in Ca Mau and Hau Giang provinces alone. Scores of shrimp farms in the Mekong Delta have also suffered at the hands of Mother Nature this year.
Meteorologists are blaming these unusual weather patterns on La Niña, the sister phenomenon to El Niño, which also wreaked havoc on the country last year, causing the Mekong Delta's worst drought in 90 years.
The alarming thing is that, according to experts, sporadic rains are here to stay, at least until the end of February.
During the same period last year, the effects of El Niño, coupled with the ongoing construction of dams along the Mekong River in Laos and China, led to extended periods of drought, saltwater intrusion and lack of freshwater throughout the Mekong Delta and even in Saigon.
[Photo via Boston]
